Can my mobo kill my drive?

satyamdubey

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hello everyone
here is a rundown of my problem (pls refer my sig as you read along)

I had a 500 GB Seagate barracuda 3 GB/s fail on me about a month back. I had settled for a low quality psu rated at 280 W for my system when i built it about 6 month back. The system was running good and I gamed and Folded with no problem. I switched on the system a month back and it failed to boot saying a bootable device was not recognozed.

BIOS could not detect my hard drive and i concluded that my stupid psu had killed it. I went for an RMA and seagate obliged.

I swapped the psu with a corsair VS 450, paper clip tested it and then put the new drive in that arrived yesterday.

System booted fine, and i reinstalled windows 7 64 bit.

I loaded the intel drivers and while they were installing, i went for a break only to return to a system telling me that a "bootable device was not recognized" and sure enough the BIOS can't see the new drive now.

I have so far:
1. cleared CMOS
2. flashed BIOS
3. Checked cpu HSF
4. confirmed standoff are not shorting the board
5. paper clip tested the psu
6. checked the power coming into my wall (checks out)
7. checked the chassis for any stray/eddy current
8. monitored cpu, pch and vr temps from BIOS and all report normal temps
9. checked all sata ports
10. checked all power and sata cables

everything checks out

DRive head clicks continuously as it powers up and then the drive powers down and it has the symptoms of a failed drive spindle.

my motherboard is a B3 stepping one so it does not have the sata degradation issue the earlier 6 series boards had.

So is it possible that my mobo's sata controller is killing my drives? is an RMA in order?
what am i missing?

thank you all

-satyam
 

satyamdubey

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My guess too...windows installed just fine intially so i started doubting my mobo. I am just blaming the crappy psu for killing my first drive but since i am not sure about that, I want to be absolutely sure its not the mobo.
Thanks for your quick response. really appreciate it

-satyam